


Two Drums In The Grey

by orphan_account



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, References to Abuse, Teen Runaway AU, early reference to threatened assault, nothing explicit in any of these tbh but i'm tagging to be safe, vague references to sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 04:48:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7743955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lance Hunter gave up after his seventh foster home. He took off at the age of fourteen, making a life for himself on the streets. Then one night he finds Bobbi Morse in an alley, fifteen and gangly, getting threatened by a couple of guys Hunter is quite familiar with.</p><p>They team up, unlikely partners in survival and, eventually, in love. </p><p>Just before Bobbi's eighteenth birthday, she's dragged back to her drug dealer parents and Hunter is left, once again, on his own. It takes years before he sees her again, and he's not sure if it can ever be the same between them.</p><p>A Teen Runaway AU, a belated birthday fic for lovesimmons over on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Drums In The Grey

The first night on her own, she begins to regret running. 

 

Then she looks down at the burn mark on her arm and she bolsters her courage. Yes, the city streets are dark and cold and she had underestimated the price of a motel room. Yes, she is gangly and fifteen and utterly terrified. 

 

And then she hears it. Someone coming up behind her in the little alley that she’s stopped in to take a rest. She’s sure she won’t sleep tonight.

 

Her throat tightens with tears, half-fear and half-embarrassment, and she forces herself to look as tough and imposing as possible as she stands. She kicks her backpack–the only possessions she has–behind a nearby trashcan. 

 

It’s her first night out on the street, and she’s not about to lose her stuff. 

 

“Hey, pretty girl,” a man in his 20s sneers at her. “You look a little lost.” 

 

His friend grins wolfishly beside him. “Looks like you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, baby.” 

 

That word, baby. The word her parents use in apologies.

 

Her blood boils.

 

“I’m not your fucking baby.” 

 

She spits it at them, suddenly six inches taller. 

 

“Oh ho!” the first man exclaims excitedly. “I see we’ve got a fighter. Ya know how I like ‘em feisty.” 

 

He takes a step forward, and then another, and his friend follows, and her back is against the wall. She could lose a lot more than just her stuff and the fear is more visceral than anything she’s ever felt. 

 

“Get the fuck away from here!” someone shouts out. A glass bottle goes flying through the hair, clipping the second man on the back of the head before it shatters on the wall behind him.

 

“Well, well, if it isn’t little Lance.” 

 

She can smell the liquor on their breath from here. They’re both dirty and rough around the edges, and she still can’t see who the mysterious accented voice belongs to. 

 

“Looks like your jaw healed,” the British guy, presumably named Lance, says a bit arrogantly. “I’d be happy to break it for you again.” 

 

“You didn’t break it!” his opponent says heatedly. He whirls away from Bobbi, distracted by his new target. Lance is around Bobbi’s own age–maybe sixteen or so–and short and lean. She can’t imagine any way that he could possibly beat these two men in a fight.

 

“Look, mate, I’m just tellin’ you to back away from the girl. Go on your way and I’ll leave you be.” 

 

Bobbi’s face burns with shame. She doesn’t need protecting. At least, she doesn’t want to need protecting. 

 

“Afraid I can’t do that.” 

 

Lance grins crookedly, a little humorless, and rolls his neck around lazily. “Ah, well. It seems we’re a bit stuck then, huh?” 

 

Then he launches a punch. It lands with a loud crack and Bobbi instinctively flinches, practically curling around the garbage can as she watches in horror. Growing up with a couple of drug addled parents meant she saw her fair share of violence–and was sometimes on the receiving end of it–but she’s never seen a fight quite like this.

 

She thinks of something her dad said to her once while she wiped blood off of his face. 

 

“A real fight,” he had said, “isn’t about who’s bigger or stronger. Any real fight is gonna come down to who wants it more.” 

 

Bobbi can’t tell who wants it more. Probably Lance, but there’s only one of him and there’s two of them. She sees a glint of silver in one of the jerk’s hands and she reacts on instinct. She bends down and picks up a plank of discarded wood. Holding it over her shoulder like a bat, she swings. It hits him in the back of the head, hard, and he goes down. He groans and curses, calling her some kind of unflattering name.

 

Lance gets the upper hand again, and when the other guy is down, he grabs onto her arm. There’s blood on his knuckles.

 

“Come on,” he says urgently. “Before they get up.” 

 

He tries to drag her but she plants her feet long enough to grab her beloved backpack. She follows his lead as they run down the darkened, damp streets for a few blocks. Finally, when she can’t run any longer, she leans against the wall. He stops, pacing in front of her with his hands on his hips. 

 

“Thank you,” she manages to get out. “For saving me back there.” 

 

“Don’t mention it,” he shrugs her off. “I hate those guys.” 

 

“I’m um–I don’t know what would have happened.” 

 

“I do,” he says darkly. “You should head home, blondie.” 

 

She swallows hard and shakes her head. “I can’t.” 

 

“How come?” he challenges. “Sneak out for a night of city fun?” 

 

“No,” she snaps back heatedly. “I ran away, alright?” 

 

She rolls up the sleeve of her flannel shirt and shows him the burns on her arm. He sucks in a sharp breath and rubs at his brow.

 

“Ah, shit.” 

 

“Yep.” 

 

“Let’s start over?” he suggests a little timidly. “I’m Hunter.”

 

“They called you Lance.” 

 

Something passes over his face. “Don’t call me that. Ever.” 

 

Her eyebrows shoot up but she nods. “I’m Bobbi. Usually short for Robert, but in this case short for Barbara, which I somehow think is worse–” 

 

“Bobbi. It’s cute.” 

 

She rolls her eyes. “Whatever.” 

 

“Look, I’ve been at this for a while, okay? I can help you out. I promise I won’t get fresh with you or anything. I just–you remind me of someone.” 

 

“Who?” 

 

“Not important,” he shrugs. “So what do ya say?” 

 

She looks around, weighing her options. She can try her luck in another alley, or she can trust this bloodied stranger who saved her. 

 

“Yeah, okay. Partners.” 

 

“I was thinking of it more as a mentor situation–” 

 

“Shut up, Hunter.” 

 

He laughs and she’s surprised to find that his chuckle is pure and child-like. His roughness had lead her to believe that there couldn’t be anything childish left in him. 

 

She learns over the course of the next few months that she was wrong. He is insatiably curious and surprisingly bright and enthusiastic. He’s funny and he likes pranks. He can be stubborn and ridiculous, and he’s prone to tantrums after a few days of not enough sleep or food. 

 

But she adores him, her Hunter. They take care of each other. He teaches her how to fight and she learns that she’s best with a weapon, so he helps her cut up a piece of PVC pipe into two little batons. They don’t have to fight all that often, but when they do, she’s brilliant with her makeshift staves. 

 

He’s her best friend. He’s her whole world. She’s the same for him, because they’re two teenage runaways living on the street and it takes them an entire year to talk about where they came from. She learns that his parents died when he was fairly young. No family in the States or anywhere else, so he and his younger sister Jemma had been separated and put into the system.

 

Well, their first foster home had wanted to keep Jemma. Not him. So Hunter was carted off, listening to his baby sister screaming for him in the driveway while her new "family" told her to be quiet. He hopes to god she's happy there, not out there somewhere on her own like he is. 

 

Bobbi's parents are low-level drug dealers, too high on their own product to make very much money. They hate each other, she thinks, but they can't seem to stay away. 

 

They talk about it once and then they never talk about it again, even when Hunter wakes up yelling or Bobbi rubs at her forearms nervously, long after the burns have faded to little puckered scars.

 

***

 

“What the fuck were you thinking?” he yells at her. He’s drunk, clearly. She can see it in the stumble of his feet. 

 

“I was trying to find us a place to stay!” she screams back. 

 

They’re seventeen and they’re exhausted. This life–living on the street, selling whatever they can get their hands on, participating in the unsavory side of this city–is soul-sucking. It’s destructive and cruel and painful.

 

But it’s better than her drug addict parents who will never get clean. It’s better than foster care, which Hunter had abandoned after his seventh go of it. 

 

It’s better to have each other, even when she wants to kill him. 

 

“We don’t need a place to stay,” he bites back at her. “We’re fine here. You and me and that’s it. That’s enough!” 

 

“It’s not!” she explodes, and for the first time in her life she’s surprised when the truth flies out of her mouth. Her whole life she’s lived in lies–about what the marks on her arm are, about what her parents are like. But right now, in this moment, she’s telling the truth. 

 

“What do you mean?” he says, low and unsteady. 

 

“I–I can’t live like this anymore,” she admits. Her voice cracks and she runs a hand over her greasy hair. “I can’t do this.” 

 

Hunter tosses aside his 40 and strides to her. He pulls her into him and she settles against his shoulder, taking a sharp breath. She wonders what he’d really smell like, under the sweat and the cigarettes and the beer.

 

She doesn’t really blame him for the drinking. She sees the appeal in numbness, but sometimes she wishes he would stop. 

 

“Hey, hey, I’m sorry,” he murmurs into her ear. “It’s okay. We’ll find a place that’ll take us for the next few days, okay? And I’m looking at that car tomorrow, remember?” 

 

Bobbi sniffs loudly and pulls back to look at him a bit archly. “You have the money still?” 

 

He scoffs, looking wounded. “Of course I do, Bob. I told you I wasn’t going to fuck it up.” 

 

“Then let’s save on the room and just buy this car tomorrow,” she decides. He watches her cautiously and she brushes off his concern. “I can survive another night. Tomorrow we’ll have a roof over our head.” 

 

“And wheels underneath us,” he reminds her with one of those rakishly charming grins that she loves so much. She smiles and leans forward to kiss him. 

 

Living like this has taken the clumsy teenagers right out of them. He presses her against the wall and she sinks into it. This is what they do–the fighting and making up and doing it all over again. In bars, in alleys, on sidewalks. 

 

This is what they have, and they make do with it. 

 

***

 

A few days before her eighteenth birthday, they’re sitting in a seedy bar called Franny’s Saloon, sipping on whiskey in a corner booth. She’s nestled against him, pleasant warmth on his side, and he pets at her hair. 

 

He has a job now. They’re still living in the car, but it’s an old-school station wagon so there’s a surprising amount of room. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than nothing. 

 

He’s still proud of the ways they’ve survived, and now he can make sure they always have a meal. That’s what’s most important to him. 

 

“I have something planned for your birthday,” he tells her quietly. She looks up at him in surprise. 

 

“Really?” 

 

“Yeah,” he grins. “Now that I can. I know your sixteenth was–” 

 

“My sixteenth was perfect,” she protests. He’d taken her just outside the city. They’d sat on a bridge and watched the lights on the skyline, just talking, all the way until the sun rose.

 

“Only you would think that.” 

 

She smiles cheekily. “And that’s what you love about me.” 

 

“Something like that.” 

 

Then a cop walks up to their table. Hunter usually has a good sense for these things but somehow; he’d been lulled into a sense of security in this saloon. Franny, the bartender, barks at the cop to leave her clientele be, but the cop ignores her and demands ID one more time.

 

He compares Bobbi’s face to a picture on a device at his hip. Then he grabs her firmly by the arm.

 

“Your parents are looking for you, young lady.” 

 

“Hunter!” Bobbi yells. She’s scared, it’s all over her face and it breaks his heart.

 

“Hey Bob, Bob it’s okay. I promise. It’s fine,” Hunter tries to soothe. He reaches for her but the cop shoves him roughly back into the booth.

 

“This girl is going home to her family,” the police officer spits at him. Hunter hears him grumbling as he hauls Bobbi off. She shouts and tries to wrestle out of his grip and Hunter just watches helplessly, following in a daze. 

 

He watches as she’s put into the back of the cop car, choking back tears. The cop stares at him before he gets in the driver’s seat. 

 

“It’s always about some jackass,” he says with distaste. “I’ll tell you what, kid. Stay away from her. She could have an actual life despite all this.” 

 

The cop peels away. Bobbi’s eighteenth birthday comes and goes and Hunter stays living in the station wagon, even as he starts building up enough money to get a place of his own. He wants her to find him when she comes looking, doesn’t want to move too far from their spots. 

 

But then a year goes by and she never comes. Hunter talks a landlord into renting him a slummy apartment. It’s a real pile of trash and he knows it, but it has running water and a roof and in the winter, even heat. 

 

He keeps a keychain from Franny’s Saloon on his new keys. He keeps a photo strip he’d taken with Bobbi on the pier tacked to the wall, the only thing standing out against the white. 

 

*** 

When he’s 23, it feels a bit like he’s come full-circle. He’s a bus-boy/bartender at Franny’s, depending on the needs of the day. He’s behind the bar one night when he sees her walk in. 

 

Her hair is dark now, dyed a deep brown that looks almost black, but he would recognize her face anywhere. She looks a lot older now, and he’s sure he does too. 

 

She’s on the arm of some tattooed asshole who repeatedly calls her baby and doesn’t take his hand out of her back pocket, not even once, all night. 

 

It makes his blood boil. All of the hate and anger and abandonment that he’d felt when he finally gave up on her come flooding back. He slams their beers on the bar and sneers at her. Her eyes plead him not to fight with her, not right now, and he decides that he will pretend he doesn’t know her, he’ll pretend he doesn’t recognize her or know who she is. 

 

She’s just another desperate woman with too much eyeliner, one of many who comes into this bar. 

 

Izzy, the other bartender, knows his story. She’s taken him home after one too many and seen that damn photo strip in his apartment. She smiles at him sadly and slides a shot to him.

 

“Sorry, kid.” 

 

He nods appreciatively and takes it. Bobbi’s eyes don’t stray from him, even when the tattooed jerk starts kissing her neck. Bile rises in his throat and he shoves his bar towel in his back pocket, digging out his cigarettes.

 

“I’m going on break,” he barks out to Izzy. She nods in understanding and doesn’t comment. She’s like the mother he never got to have, and he feels a swell of affection for her. 

 

He kicks open the door to the alley out back–the same alley he’d met her in, all those years ago–and leans against the wall. His traitorous hands shake as he lights his cigarette and he nearly drops it when he hears her voice. 

 

“Hunter.” 

 

He glances up at her, letting his eyes linger as long as he dares. 

 

“I preferred you as a blonde.” 

 

She rolls her eyes but looks sufficiently wounded.  _Good_ , he thinks. 

 

“I’ve thought about you a lot,” she offers quietly. 

 

“Really? Could have fooled me. You knew where to find me.” 

 

She swallows hard and looks up at the hazy city sky. “I was trying to help them. Please understand that.” 

 

He shakes his head bitterly. “They hurt you, Bob. Bad enough that you ran off onto the streets.” 

 

“I know,” she admits. “But they’re–they’re doing better now. My mom is in jail, but my dad is in treatment. He’s almost two months clean–” 

 

“Good for him,” Hunter bites out. “Glad to hear that your life is looking up.” 

 

She scuffs her high heels against the stones. “You saved me here.” 

 

“It was a long time ago,” he reminds her. 

 

“I know,” she mumbles. “I just–I’d hoped we could maybe be–friends.” 

 

He barks out a laugh. “Friends? Are you fucking serious?” 

 

She blinks at his vehement response. 

 

“Yes.” 

 

“I could never be your friend,” he says seriously. He finally turns to look her full in the face. In those damn heels she’s a hell of a lot taller than him. “You were never just my friend.” 

 

She nods, tucking her dark hair behind her ears. She pulls a coaster out of her purse, an address written on it in her familiar fat handwriting. 

 

“I just got a place close by,” she says. “If you ever change your mind.” 

 

He watches her head back to the door. “Who’s the guy?” 

 

She turns around, expression guarded. “A meal ticket, Hunter. That’s it.” 

 

“Nice,” he scoffs. She narrows her eyes, the fire he remembered in her making it’s first appearance. He’s glad for it. Contrite, sheepish Bobbi isn’t a good look for her. 

 

“You don’t get to judge me for the ways I choose to survive,” she spits. 

 

“Is that what I was?” he fires back. “A meal ticket?” 

 

She reels back, as if she’s been slapped. “How dare you.” 

 

He shrugs as coldly as he can muster. “I think it’s a fair question.” 

 

She shakes her head, as though she can’t quite believe this conversation. He can’t either. 

 

“Don’t die out there, alright?” 

 

Then she’s gone, leaving him with the words they’d always said to each other when they had to split up at different shelters. 

 

“You too,” he murmurs, but she’s already gone. 

 

*** 

A banging on her door startles her just past two o’clock in the morning. She’d gotten Tattoos drunk enough that they shared a heavy meal at an IHOP, and then he’d passed out in his motel room. She had slipped back out to this dump that she now calls home. There’s no lock on the door, but she’s upgraded her PVC pipes to actual metal batons. 

 

She figures she can take care of herself. She’s made it this long. 

 

Grabbing them from beside her mattress on the floor, she goes to the door cautiously. She swings it open, ready to face an angry man who expected more from her than she was willing to give.

 

Instead, it’s Hunter. The only person who never expected too much. 

 

“Hunter,” she gasps. 

 

Her hair is still wet from the shower, her makeup scrubbed off of her eyes. She’s in a big flannel, one that Hunter had worn a lot back in the day. The sleeves had gone far past his hands. She’d been wearing it the night she was taken back to her house. 

 

He doesn’t even ask, just storms past her and stands in her one-room shack. 

 

“There’s no locks,” he observes. “You need a lock.” 

 

She watches him pace, in a brown leather jacket that flatters him quite nicely. 

 

“I’m fine.” 

 

“What are you doing for money?” he asks abruptly. He turns around, a little afraid. “You said that guy was your meal ticket. We always said you would never–” 

 

She shakes her head as quickly as she can. “No, Hunter! God no. I’m not–I’m not doing that. Just some flirting, some giggling, occasional kissing. Just for some free meals when I need them.” 

 

He nods determinedly. “I’ll get you a job. A real one, but you’ve got to promise not to skip out on it.” 

 

She trembles, scared and excited all at once. “Really?” 

 

“Yeah,” he says, scratching behind his ear. “And we’ll get you a lock for your door. I don’t want you living somewhere without locks. And I don’t want you having to deal with assholes for meals, all right? I know you can handle yourself but that could get dangerous really fast–” 

 

She doesn’t tell him about all the times that it has. Instead she practically runs at him, tightening her arms tightly around his neck and burying her face into his shoulder. 

 

She had always wondered what he might smell like without the sweat and beer and cigarettes. Smoke lingers on his jacket–Marlboro 27s, she knows, still the same brand–but there’s also something like pine and whiskey. It’s intoxicating and lovely and she never wants to let him go.

 

“I loved you,” she says into his ear. It’s important to her that he knows that. 

 

He hesitates before responding. “I know.” 

 

She nods toward her mattress in the corner. His eyebrows shoot up and she laughs lightly. 

 

“Just stay the night. Nothing funny about it.” 

 

He grins and shrugs off his jacket. He wonders if a part of him might always hate her a little bit. That little part aches and screams as he kicks off his shoes and climbs onto the mattress beside her. 

 

But it shuts up when she takes his hand, like a nervous child. They stare at the ceiling and he’s thrown back to nights in the back of a station wagon. 

 

He briefly falls asleep, Bobbi’s warmth comforting beside him. Just before the sun rises, he jerks upward with a terrified shout, his heart thrumming uncomfortably in his chest. 

 

Bobbi remembers this, from way back then. He yanks his t-shirt over his head in a panic, the fabric suffocating him suddenly and powerfully. She reaches out to run her hand over his back and he flinches lightly before settling into her touch as he tries to calm down. She notices a few new scars on his back, a couple on his ribs. He’s always been covered in them, but she’d mapped them so many times that she notices the newcomers. 

 

There are also a few new tattoos. One of them is in Latin, something she doesn’t understand, and another is–

 

A stationwagon. Their stationwagon. 

 

He falls back into a troubled sleep and only once he’s out cold does she let herself get emotional.

 

She’d left him on his own and hadn’t come back. She’s sure he waited around for a long time. Tears burn at her eyes and she kisses his scruffy cheek. 

 

“I’ll be better,” she whispers. He can’t hear her, but the promise makes her feel a little bit lighter. 

 

*** 

 

It takes her three weeks to say it. She’s started working at the diner across from Franny’s, a gig that Hunter set up with the terrifying owner Melinda May.

 

Surprisingly, Bobbi likes it. It’s rewarding, in a way she never expected it to be.

 

But finally, when she and Hunter are having one of those nights where they sit on his fire escape, not really saying anything at all, she says it.

 

“I’m really sorry.” 

 

His head whips to stare at her. “You never apologize.” 

 

“Not unless I really need to,” she says softly. “And I do, really really need to. I should have come back. They needed me but so did you.” 

 

“Why’d you come back? You had to know I would be at Franny’s.” 

 

“I hoped you would be,” she admits. “I missed you, you know.” 

 

He laughs, leaning his head against the window behind him. “Now that’s a shocker.” 

 

“I know, it surprised me too,” she smiles. She grows serious again. “I don’t think my bones would have healed right without you.” 

 

She’s talking in metaphors, the way she always has when she can’t face the realities of her circumstances. He licks his lips.

 

“Yeah, well. I’m sorry I broke them.” 

 

“You didn’t,” she says fiercely. He turns to look at her. “You didn’t.” 

 

Her eyes flick to his lips and even though he’s resisted the pull for weeks, even after she’d bleached her hair in his kitchen sink, he finally gives in. He’s drawn to her like a moth to a lamplight and he kisses her. 

 

It lacks the fire of their youth. It’s more comfortable, somehow, even as they figure out who they are now. 

 

They’re still not shy, though, and she starts taking his clothes off on the fire escape and it seems like a good a place as any to consummate a new beginning for them, because they’ve always been running from some kind of fire, always in the escape and never in the safety. 

 

She pretty much stops going to her own apartment after that night, and a few months later, they finally decide that it would make more sense for her to move into his place. It’s nicer than hers, although not by much. 

 

She pins up her matching photo strip just beside his. He doesn’t comment on it, but his throat tightens when he realizes she’s held onto it, too. 

 

*** 

 

“Hunter!” Bobbi calls out. “Where are all the pans?” 

 

He leans against the doorway, watching her move around their kitchen in little denim shorts and a t-shirt. She has a bandana tied up in her blonde hair and he resists the urge to make fun of her for it. 

 

They left the city. Well, they left that city, and they moved to a new one. Bobbi is back in school at a community college while working in an office. She wants to be a social worker.

 

On weekends, they sometimes visit her mother in prison. Her father comes for dinner once a week–he’s been clean for three years and Bobbi is so proud of him.

 

Once a year, Hunter visits his parents’ grave but he always goes alone. Some of his do-it-alone mentality has stayed, even now.

 

Even with the ring on his finger. 

 

“Hell if I know,” he finally answers. She turns to him with a bemused smile.

 

“That took an awful long time for no information.” 

 

Her ring glints on her hand and he takes a moment to marvel in the fact that they’re here–too kids from the street, too kids in worn out shoes and full of resentment and anger and fear. 

 

It’s no mansion, but their new apartment is nice, nicer than anywhere either of them has ever called home. There’s an extra bedroom that Bobbi wants to use as a study. He can’t imagine what he’ll study in there, but he supposes he’ll pick up something. 

 

His hands are calloused from doing construction but he finally got his own license and hopefully, someday soon, will have his own business. 

 

She leans on the counter and stares at him, in that knowing way of hers. 

 

“What’s on your mind?” 

 

“This is a long ways away from a stationwagon.” 

 

She smiles fondly. “Yeah, yeah it is.” 

 

“I can’t believe we signed a lease for longer than six months,” he breathes. 

 

“Me too,” she says. “But it’s good, isn’t it? We’re putting down roots.” 

 

“Roots,” he repeats, marveling at the word. He shakes his head in disbelief. “I just can’t really believe it.” 

 

“Hey,” she says. He looks up at her and she tilts her head with a little smile. “If you ever have to run again, you know I’m right there with you.” 

 

“Same here.” 

 

She rolls her eyes. “Same here. How romantic, Hunter.” 

 

“Hey!” he protests. “You didn’t even write your own wedding vows.” 

 

She laughs and comes around the kitchen counter to wrap her arms around his shoulders. 

 

“You already know how I feel about you.” 

 

“Not always,” he says, fishing for some affection. His generally closed-off wife–a word he’s still growing accustomed to–just sighs. 

 

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” she grins. He tries to let go over her but she tightens her grip on him as he walks backward. 

 

“This whole college thing is not as good as I thought it would be.” 

 

“Shut up and kiss me.” 

 

So he does, in their new home. He’s 27 and happy, almost absurdly so. 

 

He thinks his parents would have liked her. He knows Izzy sure does. He knows he _definitely_ does. 

 

He keeps the Franny’s Saloon keychain on his keys. Every now and then, he catches her playing with it, a wistful little mist in her eyes. 


End file.
